Misery Bay: A Mystery (3 page)

He hadn’t had the heart to tell her that this was the best it would ever get. She’d have to buy a wetsuit if she wanted to swim.

Ten miles from Misery Bay, he began to pass people he knew. There was only the one road and everyone traveled it in one direction or the other every day. He recognized Dwayne Stewart’s red hair as his old classmate drove by in his small car. Then Lissa Publicover passed driving her father’s Nova Scotia Power truck. Next came a blue pickup he recognized immediately as belonging to Roland Cribby, one of the neighbors of the old Barkhouse homestead.

No one returned his wave. He hadn’t been down this stretch in six years and had lost his membership card. Might as well have been a German tourist. He’d insisted to Tuttle that he didn’t want to arrive in a police car, so he drove his own nondescript blue Subaru. Another part of the deal was that he would continue to operate out of uniform. “Get me in practice for being a civilian,” he’d explained, “and I can operate at least a little bit undercover.”

“Hard to establish a police presence,” Tuttle had fumed, “if no one knows who the hell you are.”

“Humor me,” Garrett had said. “Word will get around.”

In the center of town, easily missed if one drove over thirty miles an hour, he pulled in to the tiny grocery store. Perched at the edge of the sea, it had a rickety dock sticking out the back into the ocean. Last he knew it had been purchased by an Iranian couple who lived above the store with their two children. One family member or another was on duty from six in the morning until ten at night. He paused outside to admire an enormous bush of pink roses. The flowers grew wild all over the province and bloomed riotously in July.

Inside, the shelves were barren as usual. No fresh fruit or vegetables. There were canned goods, white bread, racks of potato chips and candy bars, a cooler with whole milk only and soft drinks. Behind a makeshift counter in the back, pizza and hoagies were offered. A slender, olive-skinned girl of perhaps fifteen worked the oven. She stared at Garrett with haunted eyes, as though she could already see the entire rest of her life stretching out before her.

The man standing at the cash register was dark with a bristling mustache and brooding eyes, but he smiled at his potential customer and spoke perfect English.

“Help you find anything?” he asked, as though every item in the store couldn’t be seen from where he stood.

This was the center of town, and Garrett knew word would spread quickly if he stated his purpose.

“Name’s Garrett Barkhouse.” He held out his hand. “I’m going to be the new RCMP officer stationed here in Misery Bay.” The girl glanced quickly at him.

The man looked stunned for a moment, then smiled broadly and took the offered hand.

“I am Ali Marshed. You are none too soon. My place was broken into last week. Didn’t take much—candy, soft drinks—just kids probably, but there’s a rowdy bunch living up Ecum Secum way. Think they own the town.”

“One of the things I’ll be looking into,” said Garrett.

The screen door slammed and a voice said, “There I was, aboot ta turn inta the gr’aage when I coulda swore I seen Garrett Barkhouse drive by.”

Garrett winced at the familiar voice, turned, and offered his hand to Roland Cribby. The scallop fisherman’s hands were rough and callused. It was like grabbing a horse’s hoof.

“Been a while, Roland.”

By any stretch of the imagination, Cribby was an unusual-looking man. He stood almost six feet tall and was lean as a beanpole with a permanent stoop that made him seem shorter. He wore a stained T-shirt and sweatpants that were six inches too short. As long as Garrett had known him, which was since they were in high school together, he’d walked with a limp, the result of one leg being slightly shorter than the other. The stoop wasn’t related to his leg but rather to a lifelong insecurity around people, as though he were constantly trying not to be seen. He had a reputation for telling stories about himself that were wildly inflated.

For years, Roland made a tenuous living diving for oysters and scallops from the bottoms of the ocean bays. The hours spent in the frigid water without a wetsuit, which he refused to use, had given him arthritis and eventually forced him to cut back on the pursuit. He’d turned to taking tourists out in his boat for sightseeing and deep-sea fishing. The arrival of the German summer homeowners had given his business a boost.

“Wa’ll now, must be five, six years. A’w’ys kept an eye on the old place, though. Sure ’nough knew ya’d come back some day.” He glanced down at Garrett’s leg. “How’s the foot?”

“Still missing,” Garrett said. And to change the topic, “The old place make it through the winter?”

“Standin’—jest. Livin’ room floor slopes ‘bout thirty degrees. Laid some tar paper over the kitchen roof two summers ago. A’w’ys meant ta send ya a bill, but I didn’t know how ta reach ya.”

“Appreciate it, I really do. Let me know what I owe you.”

“So you be stayin’?” Roland jackknifed his lean frame into one of the heavy wooden chairs by the door. Even sitting down, the stoop was pronounced.

“He’s going to be our local RCMP rep,” Marshed said.

“That a fact? Wa’ll, ya mebbe seen we can use one. Ma’s some tired o’ the boys comin’ by squealin’ their tires late at night. I had ta take a couple of ’em out behind the woodshed and teach ’em some manners.”

Garrett looked at him skeptically. Roland never confronted anyone if he could avoid it. He was an inveterate coward.

“’Sides,” the fisherman said, pausing for effect. “We could use som’un ta keep an eye on the Ar-teests.”

Garrett blinked. “Who?”

“New neighbors downta the wharf. Three of ’em bought the new house on the old Whynot lot. Poured a ton o’ money on it. Looks like a Las Vegas whorehouse, ya ask me. Partyin’ at all hours. Keeps Ma awake.”

Roland had lived his entire adult life with his mother. She was in her seventies and a semi-invalid who rarely left the house. Garrett hadn’t seen her in probably twenty years. He glanced at his watch. As usual, five minutes in Cribby’s company was enough to remind one of a pressing engagement.

“Well, good to see you, Roland. Got to be going.”

Roland stood up, opened the screen door and let Garrett go ahead of him. “Don’t be a stranger,” he said, limping off to his car. Over his shoulder, he added, “Ya want ta know anything ’bout those kids—or the Ar-teests—jest give a holler.”

4

A
MILE OUT OF THE
tiny village, he turned into Misery Bay itself. The gravel road wound through spruce forest, then skirted a large bog. He passed the overgrown track that led to where he’d be staying in the old family home. The trees lining the lane had begun to close in, and he wondered if he’d be able to make it through when the time came.

The cove road split in two and then split again as he approached a small wharf, one branch heading off into the woods. A half dozen fishing boats were tied up to the lee side of the dock. When he was a boy, the boats would never have been sitting idle at mid-morning. But the fishing industry was shut down, literally fished out of existence. Now the boat owners lobstered during the two-month season or scraped together a few tourists or Germans, wanting to go deep-sea fishing. Mostly, they collected unemployment.

He found Sarah Pye’s small white cottage on a point a hundred yards from the wharf. He knew the house. It had belonged to friends of his parents years ago. He pulled the car into the driveway and walked up a path that all but disappeared under a colorful mat of deep purple lupines. They were one of his favorite flowers, and he stopped to admire them.

A voice almost beside him said, “Well, you can’t be a local. They don’t admire flowers all
that
much.”

He looked around and saw a straw hat emerge from the dense mat of flowers. Its owner bent over to retrieve a wicker basket filled with gardening tools, removed the hat, and turned to look at him.

“You looking for that whale?”

She seemed very young. Tuttle had given the impression she would be middle-aged, after all the things that had happened to her. But the inquisitive eyes that stared out from beneath a mound of auburn hair, flecked with tiny bits of lupine pollen, were youthful and sharp.

“I’m sorry?”

“Most of the tourists want to know how to find it. You’ll need a boat, I’m afraid. It’s on one of the offshore islands—Heron Rook.”

“Uh … Ms. Pye? I’m Garrett Barkhouse. Deputy Commissioner Tuttle said you would be expecting me.”

A frown touched the corner of her mouth. “Oh.”

She bent down and picked up a pair of gloves and placed them in the basket. Without looking at him, she said, “I suppose you’ll have to come inside, then.”

The house was small, as he remembered it, filled with sunshine and flowers. The kitchen sparkled in that spotlessly clean Nova Scotian manner. She didn’t offer a chair but instead went right to work making tea. He stood awkwardly beside the kitchen table, a Spartan, wooden affair that nonetheless looked out on a spectacular vista of ocean and islands.

Finally, just as the teapot began to boil, she turned and looked at him directly. Her eyes were set off by a handful of freckles on either side of her nose, and he realized these were part of what made her look so young. Now, however, he could see a few creases around the eyes. She was small, not quite petite. He guessed she might plausibly be in her early thirties.

“Ms. Pye, I know it’s worse than late for an RCMP officer to be stationed here….”

“Oh, God, will you please stop calling me that. Do you know how strange it sounds to hear someone say Ms. in this neck of the woods? I don’t even hear it much in Halifax. Anyway, my name is Sarah.”

“Sarah, then … I … I want to express my sympathy for what you’ve been through. I’ve only just learned about the incident from my Deputy Commissioner, but it sounds bloody awful.”

She stared at him. “Tuttle sent someone who doesn’t even know what went on here?”

He sighed. “Manpower is limited, Ms … uh … Sarah. It’s why there hasn’t been much of a police presence on the Eastern shore in recent years. To be honest, the only reason I’m here is because it was the one way Tuttle could think of to keep me interested in the job. I was about to retire. I’m not totally in the dark, however. Truth is, I was born and raised here, though I haven’t been back in years. I read the papers, though.”

“The papers.” She shook her head slightly. “Yes, they worked hard to keep the details of my husband’s death out of the papers.” She took a plastic bag out of a bread box and placed several scones on a plate. Then she put the plate on the table and for the first time offered him a chair, though it was only with a quick motion of her hand.

He sat gratefully and took a bite out of a scone. It had fresh-picked blueberries in it and was close to the best thing he’d ever eaten. In a moment, tea appeared.

She poured for both of them, then sat across from him. “You don’t look like a local,” she said, her head tilted to one side.

“You’re not exactly what I expected either.”

“Why did they send you here?” she said abruptly.

“I guess I don’t have to tell you that things have turned pretty ugly in Misery Bay. Seems like whenever we crack down in Halifax, the criminal element just moves up the coast. It makes sense. Hardly any police presence here at all. Anyway, your husband was doing undercover work for us when he died. Did you know much about what he was working on?”

Her eyes saddened and he was afraid she might cry, but instead she said, “There are drugs everywhere here. Bales of marijuana wash up on shore nearly every week. They toss them overboard if the Coast Guard stops the boats. And of course other drugs, cocaine, crack, heroin, angel dust, pills of a hundred kinds. It was the drug business that finally got Patrick. They planted heroin in the house here and then got word to one of the officers they owned. We could deny it all we wanted. Made no difference. They planned all along to kill him once he was in the penitentiary. To send a signal.”

He could think of nothing to say. “Sorry” seemed totally inadequate.

“So my question to you is, do they own you too, Mr. Barkhouse?”

He stared into her sad eyes. “Sarah, it makes me mad as hell to think of a fellow officer doing that. If I can accomplish just one thing while I’m here, it will be to find out who that was and bring him to justice.”

She met his gaze. “I think I almost believe you, Mr. Barkhouse.”

“Thanks. Could you begin by calling me Garrett?”

They finished their tea and then walked down the dirt path to the wharf. The sun was a gauzy halo behind a light vale of fog, though it was warm enough.

“What did you mean when you asked if I was here to see the whale?”

“A dead whale washed up on Heron Rook Island about three years ago. A big one, a humpback, I believe. I’ve been out to see it in my kayak. First year the smell was so bad, you didn’t want to get within half a mile of it. But now, it’s deteriorated to the point that only bones are left. Whale bone can be valuable to native carvers, and of course the tourists all want to take a piece home with them as well. Most of the new German homes around the cove have pieces of vertebrae and so forth on their mantels.” She stared out at the islands. “A sad end for such a magnificent creature.”

“That happen a lot—whales washing up I mean?”

“Quite a few in the last several years.” She stopped on the pebble beach next to the wharf and poked a stone with her foot, pushing it around in a tight circle. Controlled. It was the sort of thing Garrett couldn’t do with his new eighteen-thousand-dollar foot.

“Patrick had an idea they were being used to bring in drugs. You know, kill a whale, stuff it with drugs, and tow it to an island in the dark. Stinks so bad no one wants to get near it. When it’s safe, they go in and take out what they stashed. But he never proved it, and I think it was probably unlikely—way too much work for those sorts of people. They don’t like to work. It’s what the business is all about really. Not having to do real work.”

“I suppose you know Roland?”

She grinned. The freckles seemed to leap about her face like the spray of freshly poured seltzer.